SAMARKAND (Uzbekistan): World champion D Gukesh's struggles continued as he slumped to a third successive defeat, losing to 16-year-old Turkish Grandmaster Ediz Gurel in the seventh round of the FIDE Grand Swiss here on Thursday.
Coming off reverses to USA's Abhimanyu Mishra and Nikolas Theodorou of Greece, the rest day did little to arrest Gukesh's slide as he blundered a bishop in the end game to extend his losing streak.
He now has three points from seven outings and needs to win all of his matches to stay in contention.
Meanwhile, Indian GM Nihal Sarin grabbed a share of the lead after a thrilling victory over overnight leader Parham Maghsoodloo of Iran.
He is joined at the top by German GM Matthias Bluebaum, who defeated Arjun Erigaisi. Both have 5.5 points.
Seven players, including Vidit Gujrathi, Iranian-French star Alireza Firouzja, Uzbek GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov, and Americans Hans Niemann and Abhimanyu Mishra, are in joint second place with five points each.
They all won their respective matches in the seventh round to move within half a point of the lead.
R Praggnanandhaa defeated Israeli GM Maxim Rodshtein to move to 4.5 points, joining 10 others that also includes Erigaisi and Pranav Venkatesh.
In the women's section, defending champion Vaishali Rameshbabu regained the sole lead after defeating Chinese IM Guo Qi to register her fifth win of the competition.
GM Divya Deshmukh also picked up a win.
The top two from each section will make it to the Candidates tournament of 2026 that will determine the challenger for the next World Championship match in both men and women section.